Wednesday, December 30, 2009

It's the end of the year, and it is time to look back and let the major events of 2009 pass by. Of course, Copenhagen was the event of the year for those interested in climate change. In my opinion, Tuvalu is the island (or set of islets, atolls and coral reefs) of the year. For some, they were the heroes of Copenhagen, for others, they were final proof that UNFCCC negotiations necessarily have to fail. Either way, Tuvalu exists, out there somewhere between Hawaii and Australia, but also in our discourses and in the virtual reality. Talking about Tuvalu means talking about climate change; the one is as imagined or real as the other. It's up to you to decide, after reading this story about an island of great complexity.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Please read these instructions closely before participating in the hockey stick debate:
'Based on years of experience we have compiled this guide in order to provide both seasoned climatologists, and newcomers to the climate debate with an in-depth guide to hockey sticks, as well as the knowledge required to make an informed choice when looking for the best hockey stick to suit their specific needs.
Over the last 20 years a combination of technological advances, adaptation of the game to artificial surfaces and consumer demand, has led to hockey stick manufacturers producing a wide range of products to suit all skill sets, playing styles, preferences and budgets.'http://www.hockeysticks.co.uk/

Over the coverage of 'climategate' and on lots of blogsites the view persists that Mike Mann's hockeystick is the one and only scientific obstactle to a warm (ie as warm as the late 20th century or warmer) medieval warm period.

Remember the science wars in the nineties? Facts or fiction: on the one hand the scientists who defended scientific facts as objective and representations of truth; on the other hand interdisciplinary science studies (anthropology, sociology, cultural studies etc) arguing that scientific facts are relative, relational and constructed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars

Thursday, December 24, 2009

What would be the consequences for the estimations of future climate change if the reconstructions of the climate of the past few millennia were wrong? Since estimations of future climate change are presently solely based on model simulations, they would not need to be modified. However, past reconstructions do have a subtle and, for many perhaps surprising, implications in the understanding of global climate, and in this sense they also project into the future.

There have been numerous comments and inquiries about this statement of Myles Allen and myself: in our nature-online piece (no longer freely available): "The e-mails do not prove, or even suggest, that the main product of CRU, namely the record of global surface air temperature based on thermometer readings, has been compromised. Indeed, the thermometer-based temperature record has been verified by results from other groups." I want no to take the opportunity to explain my arguments. These are my arguments.

There has been a reluctance on the part of many climatologists and other observers of Climategate to condemn the exposed behaviour. True, some said that the mails show that the researchers unfortunately do not appear as ‘nice people’ but that they have done top science.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

This brief commentary has its origins in the work of Steve Fuller in a short book called ‘Science’ (Open University Press, Buckingham, 1997.) Fuller asks ‘What is the image of social order appropriate to democracy and how is this image best realized...’ (p 4-5). He defines two types of democracy. Here I look at the type of democracy and ‘type’ of science as favored by the sample of climate scientists in the ClilSci2008 Survey of Climate Scientists.

Monday, December 21, 2009

I was always wondering why media are not looking into the economic and political interests of climate advocates - for some reasons, people conserned about the furture of climate (and the environment in general), are considered as being truly altruistic. This is certainly not the case, and it should be the role of the media to look critically.

The recently released Copenhagen Diagnosis assessment has been accomplished by 26 scientist, down from 4000 or so that contributed to the Fourth IPCC Report. These 26 have been described to be 'leading scientists', raising the question ‘what are they leading us to’?.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

As we all know blogs have become a fashionable means of communication made possible by modern technology. The question is, ‘What does this mean for science?’. Is it a reasonable means of communicating science to an open global audience? Is it a reasonable means for intra scientific discussions? How do we keep values from tarnishing scientific objectivity? Can they operate as an alternative to the peer review process associated with journals? And, of course, many more questions.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

byHans von Storch

The survey, conducted by Dennis Bray (and with some help by me), among climate scientists has now be done 3 times - the statistics of the latest survey from 2008 are now online. Dennis Bray will in future contribute regularly to this blog and highlite results from this and the earlier surveys.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

In the series Draggin' the line, a quite often quoted text is related to the wishes expressed by Mann that 'it would be nice to try to "contain" the putative "MWP.." . In this occasion, however, I think Mann is completely right to use the word contain.

The UK Met Office has released data from more than 1,000 weather stations ... The decision to make the information available is the latest consequence of the hacked e-mails affair. ...

The Met Office figures indicate that the years since 2000 - the "noughties" - were on average about 0.18C (0.32F) warmer than years in the 1990s;...

Climate "sceptics" have claimed that temperatures have not been rising over the last decade. Of the two widely-used global temperature records, one - the UK HadCRUT3 record - shows an apparent plateau from 1998 to 2008.

But climate scientists point out that this result is achieved by taking 1998 as the starting point. Taking, for instance, 1997 or 1999 as the starting point, they argue, produces a different result.

What I find remarkable about this MET office news is that it combines the release of the CRU related dataset with a statement about the seriousness of the situation. This has to be seen as a political statement at what is perceived as a crucial juncture.

George Monbiot is back to his usual rhetoric. The environmental journalist mainly writing in the UK Guardian, was one of the first to call for a full investigation of the leaked emails at CRU and confessed that he was shocked by these revelations and had lost trust in the scientists he so long believed in.

Now Monbiot focuses attention on the ‘denial industry’ again. Quoting examples from James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore’s Climate Cover-Up, he warns of the power of big oil and coal who have planted a ‘meme’ into public consciousness. These memes are the ‘familiar phrases and concepts which you can see every day on the comment threads’.

It does not occur to him that other familiar phrases and concepts (such as anthropogenic warming, 2degrees stabilization goal, 2 meter sea level rise, or tipping points) must have originated somewhere, too. Monbiot seems to assume that there is a moral divide between one side and the other because the ‘denial industry’ is being paid. He writes that ‘Dr Patrick Michaels, one of a handful of climate change deniers with a qualification in climate science, has been lavishly paid by companies seeking to protect their profits from burning coal.’ This is hardly news, but does it follow that therefore his views are bunk? If it was all about money, why doesn’t the environmental movement offer the skeptics more than the fossil fuel industry? It would not work, because they believe in what they say. You have to engage with their ideas.

If you search the CRU emails for Shell or BP you will find documented attempts of the East Anglia researchers to get funding from the oil industry. Hardly surprising for a research institution in search for new sources of funding. At one point they get excited that $40m was earmarked to Cambridge University and want to know who benefitted—not to expose Cambridge, but to receive likewise. I don’t know how successful they were, but would such an income stream invalidate the findings of the researchers? Monbiot does not ask this question. Maybe for him it is unthinkable that Tyndall researchers should have reached out in such manner.

Monbiot says: ‘The denial industry, which has no interest in establishing the truth about global warming, insists that these emails, which concern three or four scientists and just one or two lines of evidence, destroy the entire canon of climate science.’

He does not realise that the ‘three or four scientists’ were the leading researchers for the IPCC report at the time. Philip Jones and Kevin Trenberth were Coordinating lead authors for the Fourth Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 3: Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change. Michael Mann was the lead scientist on the now infamous ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction with which most of the leaked email controversy has to do. These scientists had a conflict of interest when evaluating published research (of which their own of course figured prominently). And they actively sought to suppress other research findings.

Monbiot seems to be back into ‘trusting mode’: he does not examine claims from ‘skeptical’ scientists (in the proper sense of the term) who have been involved in this battle with some leading IPCC figures for more than a decade. For them, the burning question still remains: What happened to the Medieval Warming Period?

here you can see one of the most popular news shows in the US, Jon Stewart's 'the daily show', and his interpretation of 'tricks' (you have to wait 2:30 min, but it is worth doing so):http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-1-2009/scientists-hide-global-warming-data(thanks to Brad King, grad. student at UTexas at Austin, for the link).Climate scientists shouldn't underestimate popular culture; those folks out there are watching you! It is the context, the body language, the subtle pronunciation that make Jon Stewart's comment interesting. After having read dozens (or hundreds?) of comments on the 'trick', maybe one should consider this one as the 'final official statement'? They used a trick to hide the decline. Period. Blaming Inhofe in the end, in my opinion, is his tribute to political correctness, but the comment on the 'trick' comes as a warning. Many millions are watching Jon Stewart (instead of reading the New York Times).

It would be interesting to analyse the type of paper which participates in each of these countries -- a task which cannot be done on the hoof. However, looking at a few examples, it is clear in which countries the elite papers have a greater or lesser involvement.

For the UK, it is no surprise to see the Guardian (it is not the Financial Times, though). There are some so called papers of record, such as Le Monde in France. Less pronounced, but still highly visible are La Repubblica in Italy, El Pais in Spain. Canada has the Toronto Star, the US the Miami Herald and China the Economic Observer.

Usually the position of elite papers is an important indicator of the political climate in a country.

Mr von Storch, soon the world climate conference in Copenhagen will start. Some of your colleagues took this as an opportunity to publish a drastic diagnosis according to which climate change may be faster and more severe than previously thought. Is the climate situation really that bad?

There seems to be lot of interest, and also a lot of confusion, in trying to interpret what the stolen CRU e-mails really mean. In some of the following posts we will try to place some of these emails in their proper background and include some explanations for those interested. I will try to do it in a neutral way, and let the reader make his/her own judgement.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

The German version of this essay was published online by die WELT, see.
http://www.welt.de/die-welt/debatte/article5409414/Die-Klima-Krieger.html

Her is the English version, so far unpublished:

The climate cartel

The Copenhagen conference will commence in a few days, and the parties are getting active. Also on the side of science, where two groups fight for dominance in providing knowledge – which allegedly will determine the right conclusion.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.